Questions about the FutureAs posed recently to leading scientists

Scientific American

• recently asked leading scientists to weigh in with predictions about the future in various fields of science

• Dystopic fiction is not entirely concerned with science (religion, law, government, culture also are elements in the genre)

• But these are good questions to launch some discussions and considerations of our own views of the future

First Discussion

• I’m going to pair you into groups, each with one of the questions (a few of them; the original article had 20).

• Discuss your question—you don’t need to be an expert on the topic, they are all pretty broad—and then you’ll be sharing your thoughts with the group.First: Discuss what you know about the question, your pre-conceived thoughts. Then discuss your responses.

• Afterward, we’ll take a look at how the scientists responded to these questions.

Will sex become obsolescent?

“No, but having sex to conceive babies is likely to become at least much less common. In 20 to 40 years we’ll be able to derive eggs and sperm from stem cells, probably the parents’ skin cells. This will allow easy preimplantation genetic diagnosis on a large number of embryos —  or easy genome modification for those who want edited embryos instead of just selected ones.”—Henry Greely, director of the Center for Law and the Biosciences at Stanford University

  Will we use wearable technologies to detect our emotions?

“Emotions involve biochemical and electrical signals that reach every organ in our bodies — allowing, for example, stress to impact our physical and mental health. Wearable technologies let us quantify the patterns in these signals over long periods of time. In the coming decade wearables will enable the equivalent of personalized weather forecasts for our health: 80 percent increased probability in health and happiness for you next week, based on your recent stress/sleep/social-emotional activities. Unlike with weather, however, smart wearables can also identify patterns we might choose to change to reduce unwanted ‘storm’ events: Increase sleep to greater than or equal to nine hours per night and maintain current low-moderate stress, for a 60 percent reduced likelihood of seizure in the next four days. Over the next 20 years, wearables, and analytics derived from them, can dramatically reduce psychiatric and neurological disease.”—Rosalind Picard, founder and director of the Affective Computing research group at the M.I.T. Media Lab

 

Does humanity have a future beyond Earth?

“I think it’s a dangerous delusion to envisage mass emigration from Earth. There’s nowhere else in the solar system that’s as comfortable as even the top of Everest or the South Pole. We must address the world’s problems here. Nevertheless, I’d guess that by the next century, there will be groups of privately funded adventurers living on Mars and thereafter perhaps elsewhere in the solar system. We should surely wish these pioneer settlers good luck in using all the cyborg techniques and biotech to adapt to alien environments. Within a few centuries they will have become a new species: the posthuman era will have begun. Travel beyond the solar system is an enterprise for posthumans—organic or inorganic.”—Martin Rees, British cosmologist and astrophysicist

 Will the entire world one day have adequate health care? “The global community has made tremendous progress toward health equity over the past

25 years, but these advances have not reached the world’s most remote communities. Deep in the rain forest, where people are cut off from transportation and cellular networks, mortality is the highest, access to health care is the most limited and quality of care is the worst. The World Health Organization estimates that one billion people go their entire lives without seeing a health worker because of distance. Health workers recruited directly from the communities they serve can bridge the gap. They can even fight epidemics such as Ebola and maintain access to primary care when health facilities are forced to shut their doors. My organization, Last Mile Health, now deploys more than 300 health workers in 300 communities across nine districts in partnership with the government of Liberia. But we can’t do this work alone. If the global community is serious about ensuring access to health care for all, it must invest in health workers who can reach the most remote communities.”—Raj Panjabi, co-founder and chief executive at Last Mile Health and instructor at Harvard Medical School

What is the chance Homo sapiens will survive for the next 500 years?

“I would say that the odds are good for our survival. Even the big threats—nuclear warfare or an ecological catastrophe, perhaps following from climate change—aren’t existential in the sense that they would wipe us out entirely. And the current bugaboo, in which our electronic progeny exceed us and decide they can live without us, can be avoided by unplugging them.”—Carlton Caves, Distinguished Professor in physics and astronomy at the University of New Mexico

Will gender equality be achieved in the sciences?

“Gender equality can be achieved, but we can’t just sit back and wait for it to happen. We need to ‘fix the numbers’ by recruiting more women into science and technology. We need to fix the institutions by implementing dual-career hiring, family-friendly policies, and new visions of what it means to be a leader. And, most importantly, we need to fix the knowledge by harnessing the creative power of gender analysis for discovery and innovation.”—Londa Schiebinger, John L. Hinds Professor of History of Science at Stanford University

Dystopias: What is it mean?

Dystopia: A future or alternative, imagined universe in which oppressive societal control and the illusion of a perfect society are maintained through corporate, bureaucratic, technological, moral, or totalitarian control. While dystopias often use worst-case scenarios, they also are a way of looking critically at political systems and contemporary society.

Can anyone think of examples of dystopian novels or films that are part of the cultural zeitgeist?

Some Usual Characteristics

• Propaganda is used to control the citizens of society. • Information, independent thought, and freedom are restricted. • A figurehead or concept is worshipped by the citizens of the society. • Citizens are perceived to be under constant surveillance—and may be. • Citizens have a fear of the outside world. • Citizens live in a dehumanized state. • The natural world is banished and distrusted. • Citizens conform to uniform expectations. Individuality and dissent are bad. • The society is an illusion of a perfect utopian world.

Types of Control

• Corporate control: One or more large corporations control society through products, advertising, and/or the media.

• Bureaucratic control: Society is controlled by bureaucracy, usually indicated by oppressive red tape, regulations, and government.

• Technological control: Society is controlled by technology—through computers, robots, and/or scientific means.

• Philosophical/religious control: Society is controlled by philosophical or religious ideology often enforced through a dictatorship or theocratic government.

With that in mind…

• Corporate control: One or more large corporations control society through products, advertising, and/or the media.

• Bureaucratic control: Society is controlled by bureaucracy, usually indicated by oppressive red tape, regulations, and government.

• Technological control: Society is controlled by technology—through computers, robots, and/or scientific means.

• Philosophical/religious control: Society is controlled by philosophical or religious ideology often enforced through a dictatorship or theocratic government.

Atwood’s quote

“…the two main strands are things that are not going to happen, such as Martians arriving in big giant tin cans and coming out and drinking people’s blood through straws…and things that really are conceivable, that would be Brave New World, 1984 etc., Riddley Walker, Russell Hoban’s book. Mine is the second kind. –

—”Present Tense” http://www.sfreporter.com/santafe/article-5017-present-tense.html#sthash.TJLkVPNf.dpuf

Dystopia + Gender

What does it mean to consider literature through the lens of gender?

Literary Theory

Literary theory refers to a way of reading works of literature with a particular lens: Feminism GLBT point of view Economics and power structures Queer theory

Literary theory does not mean necessarily isolating one aspect from the others, anymore than it does in life, but can be a useful way of analyzing particular elements of literature.

GBLT , Feminist and Queer Studies

Really broadly, and we will be reading more about this, GBLT studies tends to focus specifically on a direct GBLT experience within literature.

Feminist theory views literature through the issues, ideas and experiences of the female experience.

Queer studies, on the other hand, is less concerned with specific experiences and more interested in the issue of creating identities in the first place and the way in which that plays out in terms of a power dynamic. In other words, whose interest does it serve for people to self-identify or be identified in a particular way. “Queer” in literary theory refers to the instability of gender roles in ways that disrupts traditional binary ways of looking at gender.

Gender and Genre

Obviously the words have similarities in formation, but also in the way they are performed. Both are about creating distinctions between types of things, they are about creating typologies.

In the case of dystopic fiction, particularly as seen through the lens of gender and queer theory, we can and I hope will, see ways in which the literary genre is subversive because it shows potential outcomes to what we hold as stable facets of our society and shows how they can be disruptive.

Our theory readings

Will range from challenging “queer” theory, which has evolved from an academic stance to permeate the larger culture to more pointed feminist and GBLT modes of thinking.

This can include considering the author’s stance within a novel to analyzing aspects of fictional characters and their actions

Next week’s readings

Read the first half of The Handmaid’s Tale, Chapters 1 (Night) through Chapter VIII (Night) by Margaret Atwood for class. Read excerpt from Foucoult’s History of Sexuality V. 1 (handout); Read “Gender Criticism” by Eve Sedgwick.

Foucault is considered the grandfather of queer theory and to a degree GBLT theory even though he wasn’t writing about it specifically because he took up this question of whose interest does it serve for people to attach labels to their identities.

Eve Sedgwick is considered one of the most important LGBT critics in the field of literature.

Supplementary readings also available.

Here’s a question rooted in these ideas:

Foucault exercise: Take a minute, you can write a note or just think it out. Based on how you present yourself in the world, how you look, or the activities you participate in, how do you think others might categorize you. Does this differ from how you might categorize yourself?

Background on The Handmaid’s Tale

Published in 1985 Was made into an oft-forgotten 1990 film and is coming out as a TV show next year on

Hulu Also was made into an opera Was nominated for and also won numerous prestigious literary awards, including

Governor Generals Award, Arthur C Clarke Award Margaret Atwood is Canadian, she has written numerous books within the dystopic

tradition (we are reading the first of another trilogy she wrote later this semester)

The Handmaid’s Tale

“One of the tasks I set myself when writing the novel was to avoid including any practices which had not already happened somewhere, at some time…”—Margaret Atwood

As you’re reading, consider the time in which the novel was written (1985); consider any parallels you see with current political climate. But also consider the literary elements: characters, environment, the mode of storytelling.

Next week, I’ll talk in greater length about the book, but you should also come with questions and observations about both the book and the critical readings.

Important Take-Aways for the Semester

Always check the class website for assignments; it is more up to date than the syllabus! I have already changed next week’s readings.

Always be prepared for class. Do all the readings. Write down questions for things you don’t understand. Write down observations. Come prepared to engage in discussions.

Do read outside the assignments; any outside research or ideas that are relevant either from other literature or culture are welcome to our discussions and your presentations.

Do not come in here late. Do not use your phone in this classroom.

Other books for this semester

Into the Forest by Jean Hegland Children of Men by P.D. James Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilmore Brave New World by Aldous Huxley Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood He, She and It by Marge Piercy 1984 by George Orwell The Circle by Dave Eggers Station 11 by Emily St. John Mandel

Class Website

Weekly assignments will be posted on the class website, along with other information as needed. Refer always to the website for the most updated information.

Much of the supplemental readings will be handouts because a lot of it is not available online. If you miss class, which you shouldn’t, I will always leave extra copies of handouts in my office box, BEN 219. Absence is not an excuse for being unprepared for class.

assignments

Two closed-book reading quizzes that will cover both critical readings and the novels One class presentation and write-up Class participation Final paper

Reading quizzes

Will be announced in advance Will include a variety of types of questions (multiple choice and essay) Make-up quizzes will not be allowed without prior permission and really good

justification.

Presentations and write-ups

Each class, starting SEPT. 16, I will assign three to four students per class to come up with a one-page critical response to that day’s readings. A critical response means an analytical response that queries the literature and/or supplementary material. Critical doesn’t mean angry or quarrelsome. You will read or summarize your response in class as the starting point for our classroom discussion.

Please refer to syllabus for further discussion of presentations Please keep in mind that mathematically, at some point, there will be more than three

or four students per class, I think.

Class participation

Class participation includes two pieces: Participating by bringing ideas and questions Participating in class activities, which may include small-group discussions and in-class

writing assignments. I will be marking each class for your participation.

Reading and writing

You will have a final paper in this class, the details of which will be discussed later in the term. Needless to say, you should be taking notes and considering an idea or book you would like to examine for the paper.

We will have a great deal of reading this semester. Falling behind will make it hard to catch up. Stay current, come to class, take notes, ask questions.

The rest of it

Late assignments Finding me Your written work Email Cell phone policy ADA Ethics The writing center

Questions?

Next week’s assignments: Handmaid’s Tale, chapters 1-VIII, Foucault excerpt and Sedgwick expert.